


The Envelope

by Breezytealy



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Family Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29544132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Breezytealy/pseuds/Breezytealy
Summary: Eighteen treasures her family. With peace never certain though, Eighteen worries what would happen without her. Seventeen has information that could change everything.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 13





	The Envelope

**Author's Note:**

> Created for #twindroidsday run by Finalgale_kira on twitter :)! Happy 18 day!

A campfire log snapped, and sparks jumped into the starred night sky. Eighteen cosied down in her deck chair, uneven on the dune, and buried her toes in the fire-warmed sand. She'd distanced herself from her and Seventeen's family, "to escape the noise", she'd said. Marron with Seventeen and Nara's three children could make one heck of a racket, and their race up and down the surf - splashes lighting electric blue with disturbed plankton - was no exception. Krillin and Nara added to the commotion as the cheering section from a driftwood log bleacher. Otherwise, the night was still enough for Eighteen, the surf gentle on this northern side of Monster Island, reminiscent of the laps of water at Roshi's. That, the smell of the tide and fire-warmed sand between her toes reminded her of those days when all her world was Krillin and Marron, just their little family and no one more, when the world felt safe.

Eighteen swirled the contents of her glass, a sweet white wine Nara had pressed herself from the island's wild grapes, and downed it. She paused, considering more sensible options, then groped for the bottle in the ice bucket beside her. She lifted and tutted at the weight. Only half a glass left, but it'd have to do. With a steady stream of this vintage all weekend, Eighteen hadn't thought to complain about the sunset trek behind her brother as he patrolled the nearby forest trails, showcasing his monster charges and pointing out all manner of creepy crawlies with names in some dumb, dead language. But at least she'd finally heard how Marron, Goten and Trunks had fended off poachers from the island last summer, using what sounded like the guerilla warfare tactics of ambush, sabotage and pure psychological torture - Marron's capture a crucial part of the plan she'd devised, apparently. Even accounting for a boastful ten-year-old's embellishments, Marron's ingenuity impressed Eighteen. Nothing Eighteen would admit to thinking, of course, it wouldn't be right to encourage her daughter to stretch herself beyond self-defence. But even without Eighteen's guidance Marron was clearly coming into her own, now marking out the next race between her and her three cousins. Even Flint, Seventeen's eldest and older than Marron by a year, nodded obediently alongside the younger twins. 

No, Eighteen had said it was the noise, and maybe it was the wine eroding the lock on her feelings, but Eighteen had stepped away to get perspective on her family, to see them all in one, wholesome picture. Although, one member was missing.

"Hey ugly, what's that on your face?" Her brother's smirk loomed in her sightline.

Eighteen touched her chin, searching for a trace of her token supper, until Seventeen mimed a grotesque grin.

"Oh, haha." Eighteen's let her faint smile fall, but not for long. "This evening has been… nice. Let me enjoy it."

Seventeen nodded. "If it's been that good you could move here."

"Unless you open a strip mall, not a chance. I've had my lifetime's fill of islands."

"Shame. I'd make a good neighbour."

"That's bull."

"It's true. Here -" he tossed her a blanket he'd fetched from the jeep, "- I am nothing if not neighbourly."

"I'm not cold," Eighteen said. 

But Seventeen waved her off, perching on the deck chair beside her. "No need to impress me with your stoicism, city girl." 

Eighteen wasn't cold, but she could do with the comfort. With a put-out huff she used her free hand to cover her chest and bare legs with the fleece blanket, extra cosiness immediately apparent. "Thanks," she said.

Seventeen snorted his subdued version of a laugh at her concession, and they lapsed into a comfortable silence, watching their kids play. The final foot race finished with Flint claiming victory, and they soon moved to devising an obstacle course using driftwood, Marron project managing in a loud voice with louder gestures. Even Krillin and Nara were roped in to make arches from the larger branches, Marron and Flint struggling to lever them with their smaller frames. 

"Marron's in her element," Seventeen said.

"It's good for her." Eighteen said. "She's careful around her friends at home. The only other people she can relax around are the Saiyan kids, but they're feral." Marron's next command came out a strangled scream. She dropped her oversized log and frantically danced and batted at her dress to remove some horror of a creepy crawly. Then, lamenting her lost composure, she tidied her dishevelled hair and sheepishly rolled the log across the beach with her feet. 

"I see Marron takes after you in poise." Seventeen said.

"Jerk." Eighteen would have punched him, but she was too cosied down to bother. "I never scream at the bugs. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction."

Seventeen snorted again, still sat on the edge of his seat. Another silence, this one noticeably pregnant, and Eighteen mentally counted down.

"So, how's Krillin?" Seventeen said, right on cue.

"You're hovering."

"Am not."

"You've had all weekend to quiz him yourself. What do you want."

Seventeen mouthed in silence, an argument on his tongue, but realising he'd been rumbled blew through his cheeks and settled back in his deck chair. "Last year, before the Universal Tournament - you told me you were worried that Marron would end up alone."

"Krillin was the one bellyaching about leaving her here with the boys. I had the utmost faith in her."

"Not then. Later. In case for whatever reason we didn't come back, you didn't know who'd take care of her."

Eighteen's blanket came over stuffy. She flicked the edges to get a cooler breeze beneath, and took the final gulp of wine. She set the glass on her knee and twiddled the stem. "It was a moment of weakness," she said. "Either we came back or everyone was erased. It wouldn't have mattered."

"But it's a real concern to have." Seventeen gestured to his own small family. "I knew Nara was here for our children, and we would have scooped up Marron."

"Can't say I'd've done the same for your three extra mouths." Eighteen said. "Might have sold them to Bulma. She could grind their bones for margarita salt."

"I was being serious."

"So was I, it's how she stays so young." But Seventeen refused to let up, his cool completely lost with the tiniest of frowns. "You're being disgustingly sentimental right now," Eighteen said. "The alcohol is my excuse, what's yours - some kind of jungle flu?"

"Your question got me thinking. Who else is there for our kids? Nara's an only child, her parents aren't around. Krillin's the same. And there's our little situation."

Eighteen snorted. "Yeah well, I'm not exactly jumping to have a family reunion with the rotten head you decapitated." 

"But that's my point." Seventeen's chair creaked as he leant over. "We can't have a reunion because we've never looked for anyone else." He pulled a thick, folded, white envelope out of his back pocket. 

Eighteen boggled. "What."

"Nara's suggestion. We used a private investigator a while back to find out how the twins' parents died in case they ever ask. So, I gave him one more job."

"You're not joking, are you." 

"You know I'm incapable of comedy. Took the guy longer because there wasn't a lot to go on, but, he finally came up trumps." Seventeen flicked the envelope straight.

"And?"

"I haven't opened it yet. Won't without your say so."

Eighteen snatched the envelope out of Seventeen's fingers. It was addressed to the island, covered in a paranoid number of stamps and stained brown with what she hoped was mud encountered on its travels. It had weight, some thicker papers inside, pages sliding like photographs - there were photographs - and some kind of paged document stapled in one corner. The guy had certainly delivered.

"How did you find a PI?"

"A tracker Nara knows, worked for MIR years ago. He usually took his grievances to the poachers' home addresses."

Eighteen nodded. Admirable. She weighed the envelope again. That would be a lot of words to prove he couldn't find anyone.

"So, we have a family, at least." 

"Uh huh."

Seventeen had a twinkle in his eye, his version of a full-blown eyebrow wiggle, and Eighteen had to admit she felt it a little herself, that existential weight lifted. Gero had told them of their past, but gave so many contradictory statements the truth was impossible to untangle. In one story she and Seventeen had never been kidnapped at all, Gero growing them in his lab. That had seemed the most obvious lie until she'd met Cell. Now though...

Eighteen looked to Marron, she now pleading her case to Krillin and Nara to prove the twins had cut corners on the obstacle course, the start of pre-teen frustration showing in her exasperation. There was now a very real possibility Marron had grandparents. Or maybe Eighteen and Seventeen had cousins of their very own they played with once-upon-a-time, or even blood siblings. Maybe Krillin had an actual father-in-law to worry about appeasing. 

Eighteen held the envelope to the fire's light but saw no shadow of what was inside. 

"Maybe they're rich," Seventeen said, mischievousness creeping into his voice.

"How'd you figure that?"

"Gero did once say our parents didn't care. And what type of parent doesn't care? The ones that can afford spares. Rich kids cause trouble because they're left alone. Fits how Gero said we were hellraisers."

He had sound logic. Eighteen held up her empty glass in toast. "I do suit the finer life." With amusement she imagined a wailing woman, heavily bejewelled, weeping into fine lace in guilt that she hadn't searched harder and bemoaning the stir this would cause in the neighbourhood. A burly man filled out on red meat guffawed at the hilarity of the situation and handed over his credit cards to Marron, 'to make up for lost time' he said, and Marron's eyes shone with possibility. With a huge inheritance due Marron would be set for life whatever happened to Eighteen and Krillin. But...

"I don't think that fits." Eighteen remembered frustration towards her mother, yes, but not the cold distance high wealth would afford.

"Those faded memories were falsified," said Seventeen.

"Said a liar," snapped Eighteen, and her brother rolled his eyes. She couldn't remember much, but that feeling, no matter how fleeting and ugly it had been in her youth, was something she held onto. "Maybe they're dead, and have been for a while. The documents could be death certificates and your PI found the photos in some archive."

Seventeen hummed. "Which explains why we were on the streets. Vulnerable little us, stolen away in the prime of our emaciated youth."

"Or that's why we volunteered for the experiment -" that was another of Gero's potential lies "- to get some food."

"I've always liked that one," Seventeen said, a glint in his dreaming eyes, "but instead we went through all that to get strong enough to avenge our family."

"Against who?"

"I don't know, maybe we'll find out in there." He glanced at the envelope, buoyed - then tutted as a thought occurred. "Or maybe they're family photos of everyone old and decrepit, and Gero _had_ been working on us for decades."

Eighteen had forgotten that possibility. Eighteen and Seventeen were older than appearances, that much was certain, but their numbering was an activation time, not when Gero's experiment started, and he'd been working on the perpetual ki energy engines every one of their cells harboured since his undergraduate.

How would it feel to finally meet their parents, but at the end of their long lives? To see faceless siblings and nieces and nephews beyond their prime, to small-talk at them, the twins' grief fresh cut and jagged in their arrested development but their family's worn down over time to a smooth familiarity, just a background noise, the 'kidnapping of the twins' a distant familial legend and nothing more. And then Marron would mean nothing to them. But Eighteen could deal with that disappointment, it was almost a comfort.

Krillin, distracted from the rerun of the obstacle race before him, caught Eighteen's eye with a bright smile, and Eighteen nodded back to reassure him in kind. Nara smiled in Eighteen's direction too, but it was a nervous one, her naturally ruddy cheeks reddening further. Eighteen wouldn't hold this against her. She was trying to help. They all were, in their own ways. And that's what scared Eighteen most of all. That someone she didn't know would care.

"Maybe…" she said, "maybe our family's just boring." Seventeen narrowed his eyes, trying to read where to step next with a joke, but she hadn't set up one. "Maybe they miss us, and they're still sad about it. Maybe we were assholes when Gero kidnapped us, sure, but we were kids." She pictured the man and woman again, this time more modest, and Eighteen's teen frustration turned to relief at their acceptance. The woman held Eighteen's hands, the man greeted Krillin with open arms, and both pulled Marron into a warm embrace. Marron melted knowing she was safe. The reunion was perfect, until the woman used Eighteen's birth name - a scratched noise representing Eighteen's lack of memory - and claustrophobia hit her, walls tighter than the pod coffin Gero stored her in. No. Even this scene, as beautiful as it was, wasn't right, either. This wasn't where Eighteen would find her peace of mind.

"Did the PI speak to them?" Eighteen asked her brother.

"No. I asked him to keep his distance."

"Good." She passed back the envelope. "I don't want to know."

Seventeen blinked. "You're kidding. I thought you'd be psyched." 

"At having answers? So did I. But we're not their kids anymore. Even if they haven't moved on, we have. Do we really want to come back from the dead to tip over some safe, boring family that would have given us safe, boring names like Bread and Butter, or Rock and Boulder-"

"Don't mock my children's names."

"I'm not, I mean…" When pregnant with Marron, Eighteen had felt a secret loneliness, ungainly in her new role without a motherly figure to guide her. But then Chichi and surprisingly Bulma had stepped in as friends with all the warmth and advice she hadn't asked for (though sorely needed). Although Eighteen knew she'd never make a perfectly orthodox mother, Marron was growing into a self-assured young woman regardless, surrounded by aunts and uncles of all kinds of lineage, their scrappy weed of an extended family just as loving as this small, seemingly fragile core. "Do we really need to resurface details of our past? All the people I care about, and the idiots that like me despite our fraught history, call me Eighteen. That's my name, and those people are our wider family. And…" She nudged Seventeen's foot with her own. "I like that we match, and that we both share that part of our name with Sixteen." 

Seventeen slumped back into his deck chair with a soft groan. "You're a nightmare when you drink." He stared at the envelope, the choice now with him. "But you're right, I wouldn't want to disrespect the big guy." 

"I'll refund you."

"No, no need. Talking it over - we've lived with the mystery for so long, the truth would ruin the stories." Seventeen flipped the envelope over and over in his fingers. "Turns out the twins' parents were lovely people who died in a car accident," he said matter-of-factly. "It's the truth, and it's sad, but it's so _dull_. I think I prefer our stories, and knowing one of them could be right."

And with a playful nonchalance he flicked the envelope into the fire.

"You better hope there was nothing irreplaceable in that," said Eighteen.

"What does it matter," Seventeen said. "We've already replaced it, right?" 

They watched the fire together, the inks in the photographs catching and flaring green. Within thirty seconds what answers they could have had were gone. Eighteen lay back and let her eyes unfocus on the bright Milky Way above them, her newfound steadfastness against the Universe's machinations washing over her.

"You know I'd have your family's back, right?" she said, "whatever happens."

"Of course. And I've got yours."

Eighteen let her eyes slip closed against the background of the waves, the warmth, the sounds of the kids playing. But her peace didn't last.

"Lazuli!" 

Eighteen started awake as though called, but Seventeen and Nara were only yelling for their daughter. She'd frozen wide-eyed, mid-climb across the rock pools - treacherous for delicate knees in the dark - and she tugged in panic on her twin brother's mop of hair, his head peeking over a rock. 

"And you Lapis, get away from there, too." Nara stared down her younger son until he huffed.

He pointed to a much further in Marron and Flint trying to fish out another plank of driftwood. "But they-"

"-Can fly," Seventeen said, "so if they splatter against the rocks they deserve what they get."

"Hey!" shouted Marron, wheeling round, "don't be a meanie, Uncle Seventeen - " Seventeen feigned flat ignorance at how that possibly could have caused her offense, and everyone laughed until Eighteen could hold back her crooked smile no longer.

Eighteen, Krillin and Marron were only a little family, and yes, maybe there was a larger one out there to be found. But forgotten memories and more forgotten names meant nothing to the memories they were making and that real, sprawling family they'd built together across Earth and beyond. And she knew no matter what happened to Krillin and herself, Marron would always be loved.


End file.
